IVAN III

born Jan. 22, 1440, Moscow died Oct. 27, 1505, Moscow Russian in full Ivan Vasilyevich, byname Ivan The Great, Russian Ivan Veliky grand prince of Moscow (14621505), who subdued most of the Great Russian lands by conquest or by the voluntary allegiance of princes, rewon parts of Ukraine from PolandLithuania, and repudiated the old subservience to the Mongol-derived Tatars. He also laid the administrative foundations of a centralized Russian state. Additional reading J.L.I. Fennell, Ivan the Great of Moscow (1962), the most detailed account of Ivan's reign in English, emphasizes his diplomacy and foreign policy.